Southern Justice, part 1
I’m Fixin’ to present part one of Southern Justice:
B. Wendell Hormel, Esquire, had slept in his clothes again, but it didn’t seem that his rumpled condition caused him any concern. He was ecstatic, all aflutter, happy beyond bounds, because his favorite and most profitable client, Jackie Payne, was back in town. She had left a message on his cell phone sometime during the wee hours after he was passed out on his sofa.
Lawyer Hormel had cheated and bought his way through law school and had taken the bar exam 11 times before he finally passed it. Most states have a limit on the number of times a person can take the bar exam, and pass it in order to practice law.
Fortunately for B. Wendell, Georgia was one of a handful of states which placed no limit on the number of bar attempts.
He managed to secure a lowly position in a small law firm, and then another, where his responsibility was not much more than a messenger. But then he was cast out of both of them mainly due to his slovenly appearance, and came close to being disbarred for misplacing and losing depositions, affidavits and various other important legal documents.
In desperation, he drew on a small inheritance fund from his late Aunt Claudia Hormel, and opened his own practice in a small building which looked like a leftover among the mushrooming giants around it.
B. Wendell starved for a while, preparing a will and such once in a while. But then one night karma was locked in on him when he ran into Jackie in a bar and listened to her sad story of how she had to endure terrible sexual harassment in order to keep her job. To B. Wendell, this information was like giving new life to a dying man.
That was the beginning. In a matter of days, on behalf of his client, the lovely Jackie Payne, B. Wendell had filed a law suit against the huge corporation which employed Jackie. Her boss’ immediate reaction was to fire Jackie. B. Wendell immediately filed another suit based on the law which stipulated that discrimination and retaliation, in any form, is expressly prohibited.
After the human resources manager at the giant corporation had reviewed the law suits and consulted with the legal department, she presented the matter to the company president, who was horrified thinking about the possibility of going to trial and the negative publicity it would bring the company. He immediately asked the human resources manager her opinion on how to proceed.
They were suing for $500,000. The company made a quick decision and offered a settlement of $100,000. B. Wendell countered with an offer of $400,000 and settled for $200,000. His contingency was 35 percent, or, $70,000. The remaining $130,000 went to Jackie.
B. Wendell had billed about 24 hours to the case which came out to him earning almost $3,000 an hour. It was the happiest and most prosperous moment of his short-lived career.
Jackie’s ex-boss received a letter of reprimand and the company hired the American Management Association to do seminars for all their employees teaching them what was considered as harassment and how to avoid it. Consequently, their cost was much greater than the settlement they had paid out to B. Wendell Hormel, Esquire.
The night after the settlement was awarded Jackie and B. Wendell had a celebration dinner and agreed to do the whole thing over again in the form of a caper. The plan was that Jackie would find a new job with a male supervisor at a prosperous company and lead her victim on until he had compromised himself into a situation which could be construed as sexual harassment.
So Jackie and B. Wendell began working the system. Once Jackie got a new job it usually only took a few months before they were in a position to sue.
This went on for several years and the pair raked in settlement after settlement. During this time B. Wendell gained a reputation as the best sexual harassment lawyer in Atlanta, and his practice flourished greatly. However, he never hired another lawyer and formed a firm, but rather just increased his staff of paralegals and worked like a mad man. He discovered that 80 percent of all sexual harassment cases were settled out of court. Consequently, he had never gone to court. If the Defendant didn’t offer to settle, then at the last minute he would, just before fixing to go to trial.
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